The King's Curse Read online

  “We always speak with everybody,” Richard Layton says quietly. “That’s how we make sure that not a sparrow falls. We are doing God’s work, we do it thoroughly.”

  “Prior Richard will sit with you, and hear all that is said,” I assert.

  “Alas, no. Prior Richard will be our first interview.”

  “Look,” I say, in sudden fury. “You can’t come in here to my priory, founded by my family, and ask questions as you like. This is my land, this is my priory. I won’t have it.”

  “You did sign the oath, didn’t you?” Layton asks negligently, turning over the papers on the desk. “Surely you did? As I recall only Thomas More and John Fisher refused to sign. Thomas More and John Fisher, both dead.”

  “Of course My Lady Mother signed.” Geoffrey speaks for me. “There is no question of our loyalty, there can be no question.”

  Richard Layton shrugs. “Then you accepted the king as the supreme head of the Church. He orders that it be visited. We are here doing his bidding. You are not questioning his right, his divine right, to govern his Church?”

  “No, of course not,” I say, driven.

  “Then please, your ladyship, let us start,” Layton says with a most agreeable smile, pulls out the prior’s chair from behind the prior’s table, seats himself, and opens his satchel while Thomas Legh draws a stack of papers towards him and writes a heading on the first page. It says Visitation of Bisham Priory, April 1536.

  “Oh,” Richard Layton says, as if it has just occurred to him. “We’ll speak to your chaplain too.”

  He catches me quite unawares. “I don’t have one,” I say. “I confess to Prior Richard, as does my household.”

  “Did you never have one?” Layton asks. “I was sure there was a payment, in the priory accounts . . .” He turns over pages as if looking for something he vaguely remembers, flicking through them like an actor playing the part of someone looking for a name in old papers.

  “I did,” I say firmly. “But he left. He moved on. He gave me no explanation.” I glance at Geoffrey.

  “Most unreliable,” he says firmly.

  “Helyar, wasn’t it?” Layton asks. “John Helyar?”

  “Was it?”

  “Yes.”

  They stay in the guesthouse of the priory for a week. They dine with the canons in the priory dining hall and they are wakened through the night by the priory bell ringing for prayer. I hear with some pleasure that they complain of sleeplessness. The cells are small and stone-walled and there are no fires except in the prior’s study room and in the dining hall. I am sure that they are cold and uncomfortable but this is the monastic life that they are investigating; they should be glad that it is poor and rigorous. Thomas Legh is accustomed to grander standards, he travels with fourteen men in his livery and his brother is his constant companion. He says that they should be staying in the manor and I say that they would be welcome but I have an infestation of biting fleas and all the rooms are being smoked and aired. Clearly, he does not believe me, and I do not try to convince him.

  On the third day of their visit Thomas Standish, the clerk of the kitchen, comes bursting into the dairy where I am watching the maids press the cheeses.

  “My lady! The villagers are up at the priory! You’d better come at once!”

  I drop the wooden cheese press with a clatter on the well-scrubbed board and strip off my apron.

  “I’ll come!” says one of the dairymaids eagerly. “They’re going to throw that Crummer man from his horse.”

  “No, they’re not, his name is Cromwell, and you will stay here,” I say firmly.

  I stride out of the kitchen, and the clerk takes my arm to guide me over the cobbles of the yard. “There’s just a dozen of them,” he says. “Nate Ridley and his sons, and a man I don’t know, and Old White and his boy. But they’re full of it. They say they won’t let the visitation happen. They say they know all about it.”

  I’m just about to answer when my words are drowned out by a sudden peal of bells. Someone is ringing the bells out of order, out of time, then I hear that they are ringing them backwards.

  “It’s a sign.” Standish breaks into a run. “When they ring the bells backwards, they signal that the commons have taken command, that the village is up.”

  “Stop them!” I order. Thomas Standish runs ahead as I follow him to the priory where the fat bell ropes dangle at the back of the church. There are three Bisham men and one man I don’t know, and the clangor of the ill-timed peal is deafening in the small space.

  “Stop it!” I shout, but no one can hear me. I cuff one of my men around the head with a hard backward slap of my hand, and I poke the other with the blunt cheese knife that I still have in my hand. “Stop it!”

  They stop pulling the ropes as soon as they see me and the bells jangle on more and more unevenly until they are stilled. Behind me the two visitors, Legh and Layton, come tumbling into the church, and the men turn on them with a growl of anger.

  “You get out,” I say to them briskly. “Go and sit with the prior. I can’t answer for your safety.”

  “We are on the king’s business,” Legh starts.

  “You’re on the devil’s business!” one of the men exclaims.

  “Now then,” I say quietly. “That’s enough.”

  To the two visitors I say, “I warn you. Go to the prior. He’ll keep you safe.”

  They drop their heads and scuttle from the chapel. “Now,” I say steadily, “where are the rest of you?”

  “They’re in the priory, they’re taking the chalice and the vestments,” Standish reports.

  “Saving them!” old Farmer White says to me. “Saving them from those heretical thieves. You should let us do our work. You should let us do God’s work.”

  “It’s not just us,” the stranger tells me. “We’re not alone.”

  “And who are you?”

  “I’m Goodman, from Somerset,” he says. “The men of Somerset are defending their monasteries too. We’re defending the Church, as the monks and the gentry should do. I came here to tell these good people. They must stand up and defend their own priory. Each one of us must save God’s things for better times.”

  “No, we must not,” I say quickly. “And I’ll tell you why. Because after these two men have run away—and I am sure you can make them scuttle back to London—the king will send an army and they will hang each one of you.”

  “He can’t hang us all. Not if the whole village rises,” Farmer White objects.

  “Yes, he can,” I say. “Do you think that he does not have cannon, and handguns? Do you think he doesn’t have horses with lances and soldiers with pikes? Do you think he can’t build enough scaffolds for all of you?”

  “But what are we to do?” The fight has quite gone out of them. A few villagers straggle in through the church door and look at me as if I will save the priory. “What are we to do?”

  “The king has become the Moldwarp,” a woman cries out from the back of the crowd. Her dirty shawl is over her head and her face is turned away. I don’t recognize her and I don’t want to see her face. I don’t want to give evidence against her, as she goes on, shouting treason. “The king has become a false king, hairy as a goat. He’s run mad and eats up all the gold in the land. There will be no May. There will be no May.”

  I glance anxiously at the door and see Standish nod reassuringly. The visitors have not heard this; they are cowering in the prior’s chamber.

  “You are my people,” I say quietly into the unhappy silence. “And this is my priory. I cannot save the priory but I can save you. Go to your homes. Let the visitation finish. Perhaps they will find no wrongdoing and the canons will stay here and all will be well.”

  There is a low groan as if they are all in pain. “And if they don’t?” someone says from the back.

  “Then we must beg the king to dismiss his wrong-thinking advisors,” I say. “And put the country to rights again. As it was, in the old days.”

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